Tiarra Edmundson – From Right to Left True North No.1, True North No.2, True North No.3, True North No.4

The two inch line in the center is a clean separation as to how to read the column. There are three slots and only two spheres above this line, and each sphere can be counted as “5”. If both spheres are raised, the number is “0” for that column ,

The bottom half of the separation can be explained as follows: there are five slots but only four spheres. Each of the spheres represent “1”. All four spheres pushed up would represent “4” or if only two are pushed up, this will represent the number “2”.

One must take into account the top and bottom to arrive at the correct figure for the column.

The abacus final number is read from right to left and follows traditional math placement theory…and is as follows, “ones”, “tens”, “hundreds”, “thousands” and so forth…

Here, I have blotted the empty slots to highlight the spheres. When the solid colour is consistent, that indicates it is a positive sphere. When the space is a negative slot, I paint in non-repeating, abstract forms and colours.